ESUA will participate in new Turkish project

ESUA has been invited to become a partner in a new Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation project by the Mardin Cultural Tourism Association in Turkey: Traditional Architecture and Urbanism: Curricula and Training Course Development. The project has been awarded funding by the Lifelong Learning programme of the European Union.

A model of the historic center of Mardin. Source: Wikimedia

Project summary from the original project description by the Mardin Cultural Tourism Association:

Mardin is one of the anxious places of Anatolia and the city is between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the area called Mesopotamia. So many civilization settled in the city throughout the history. All the civilizations settled in the city, left their culture (such as tombs, fountains, baths, home) and most of these places are about to demolish. Today by means of all the civilizations leaved in Mardin, the city excepted one of the world heritage place.

Mardin's cultural heritage vanishes due to lack of scientific approaches,qualified employees and not take into account of cultural fabric in urban transformation applications in Mardin.

Degradation of the natural environment; urban fragmentation and sprawl; loss of local identity in the face of globalization; loss of skills needed to protect and build upon local heritage, and to realize its economic value; and incoherence of the development process are the important challenges of the Turkey built environment. The Association of Mardin Culture, Tourism and Publicity offer an integrated curriculum of urbanism and architecture for aiming those challenges. We will do this through a model of learning that is project-based, inter-disciplinary, collaborative, and international. We will develop this curriculum for entering students, graduate students and continuing professionals through an open model of collaboration and dissemination with our partners.

The outcomes of our project are educational curriculum including the subjects which are construction materials used in restoration and fiber of historical places; a web site including information about the data that we get from our partners and latest applications about urban transformation and historical places; course aiming for older peoples to work in urban transformation applications.

By the help of curriculum we are going to educate students about urban transformations with latest norms of EU and with the help of this curriculum young people will be able to have a job. And also the course will make the adults have a job in this area. It means that the project will provide new area of employments for the citizen of Mardin. The web site developed within the project will provide actual Information about the urban transformation in Mardin and EU especially in our partner’s country.

Since, urban planners does not have enough skill for planning the urban area, the urban transformation applications are not successful at all. Therefore, the conduction of vocational training, and a centralized system of learning is needed. To solve this problem, it is aimed that the products of a previous LdV-LLP project called "ESUA - European school for traditional architecture and urbanism" will be transferred.